Dana Read has lived what she refers to as “a roller-coaster life.” Everybody has their ups and downs, and Read has had her share. An artist with a master's degree in painting and drawing, the 60-year-old San Antonio transplant put down her own paintbrush to reconcile her passions in life: teaching and promoting art.

She accomplishes the former as an art teacher at South San Antonio High School — “I love my kids,” she says — and the latter as the owner/director of REM Gallery, the local contemporary art gallery in which Read literally lives with art.

“You may hear people say I had the gallery with the bed in it,” says Read with a hearty chuckle in her West Texas twang.

That was a couple of incarnations ago. REM began at the Finesilver building in 2002, moved to a couple of locations in the Blue Star arts complex and has found a home in the last couple of years in a gray two-story Victorian in the residential Tobin Hill Historic District just north of downtown.

“It's worked out well,” she says of the latest location, in the lower half of a hundred-year-old house on Park, with its 10-foot ceilings and hardwood floors, while Read lives upstairs. “It could be an inconvenience when the gallery was actually in my living space. But this is easy. It's really separate.”

“I've known her for six years now, ever since I arrived in San Antonio,” says painter Ricky Armendariz, an El Paso native who is an associate professor and graduate advisor of record at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “It's been a pleasure working with Dana because, being an artist and teacher, she really can anticipate an artist's needs. San Antonio only has a handful of contemporary commercial art galleries and REM has always been at the center of that scene. She provides a very valuable service to the San Antonio art community.”

Read's roller coaster took off from San Angelo in the '50s, where her physician father and “first-generation Italian mother,” a college professor in nursing, moved to from Virginia when she was 4 years old.

“I was always involved in art and drama in high school,” says the affable Read, who doesn't seem to have a pretentious bone in her body. “But always in the background were my parents telling me to do something serious.”

“It was before gentrification and when we visited, my mother said, ‘You are
not going here.' She thought I would get killed,” Read recalls. “So I went to Texas Tech to get my master's degree.”

A variety of jobs followed, including window display artist and graphic artist and designer. She went to dental school for a couple of years before moving to Raleigh, N.C., where she became involved in a vibrant art scene.

“I was in shows, represented by two galleries. ... My career as an artist was taking off,” Read says. “Then my mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.”

After moving back to Texas to help with her mom's care, Read found a job — and a talent — in sales. She landed a position selling pharmaceuticals for the global corporation Merck in north Texas. Her sales territory included her old stomping grounds.

“I'd known all the doctors in the area since I was a kid,” she says. “I did very well as a drug rep.”

Then came 9-11.

“After 14 years, I was pretty burned out, and when I saw those people jumping out of buildings ... I just started to re-evaluate my life,” she says. “I wanted to do something I loved.”

Having family in and around San Antonio, she moved to the city in 2002 from Dallas, where she had Sky Gallery in Deep Ellum for a couple of years while working for Merck.

Within a few months, she opened REM Gallery here and, after getting her certificate, began teaching art at South San West Campus in 2004. One love dovetails with the other.

“On the South Side, art is so much a part of the culture,” she says. “It's in the water. My kids are amazingly talented. And it's whole families! They'll bring in an incredible drawing done by their granddad! They're just a lot of fun to teach.”

A few years ago, Read had some medical setbacks — knees, hips — that sucked up all her savings built up over those years at Merck.

With the help of her partner, website programmer and art installer Keith Onken, assistant director Larry Leissner, and gallery assistant Tess Martinez, Read made the move from a large space at Blue Star to Park Avenue in the summer of 2009, opening her new home/gallery with a show of work by Margaret Craig, chair of the painting, drawing and printmaking department at the Southwest School of Art.

Still, the question lingers: Why have an art gallery in your house?

“It's a passion,” she says. “It's like my kids, with teaching.”

There are pragmatic reasons as well.

“I've shown several artists who were turned down by other galleries,” says Read. “Artists who have since gone on to win awards, get tenure at their universities. So that's another thing with showing art in your living space, too, is you can afford to take risks.”

Read adds that she “wants a gallery where you can approach the dealer, and it isn't like this ivory tower.”

Krisanne Frost, gallery liaison at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, recently opened an art space in her Southtown apartment. “I think it's the evolution of urban living — lofts, living/work spaces — and as circumstances change in life this is a way to continue supporting the arts,” she says.

Read is happy with what she has accomplished in the gallery world and enjoys living with art.

“When I worked at Merck, I made a lot of money and lived in a high-rise condo on Turtle Creek,” she says. “But I'm so happy showing art and teaching my kids.”

She's also picked up a paintbrush again to work on her own art.

“I finally have it all together — as long as I don't have another crisis!” Read says. “After this roller-coaster life I've led, it's peaceful, and I can maybe get back to my own work. A gallery in North Carolina's been bugging me about it.”

REM Gallery is at 219 E Park Ave. For more information, call 210-224-1227 or visit www.remgallery.com.